The industry offers a $100,000 reward following the release of as many as 500 mink from a farm in Ontario
DRESDEN, Ont. — Canada’s farmed fur industry has offered $100,000 for capture and prosecution of the people who released as many as 500 mink near Brantford, Ont.
Kirk Rankin is concerned about the release and similar actions in the past.
“I’m a fur farmer myself. I was already visited a year ago last July,” Rankin said.
“How can this be about animal rights when you kill off hundreds of mink just so one or two might live.”
Rankin said there’s little in the way of food in rural Ontario to sustain the number of mink being released or even a few. Most will starve, he said.
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In the wild, the North American species is a small but ferocious predator. Those that were set loose overnight on April 29 were domesticated and different in size, capability and disposition than wild mink.
“I’ve talked to people who are against it. It’s a free country. You don’t have to wear fur but you shouldn’t go breaking into a farm. It’s against the law.”
At the Brantford-area farm, the majority were nursing females with dependent kits, some only a few days old, according to Marianne Patten, president of the Canadian Mink Breeders Association.
CMBA executive director Gary Hazlewood said, “Whoever released the mink showed a complete disregard for the welfare of the animals; they should be charged with animal cruelty.”
The CMBA is handling the reward money. Little is known about the activists who, according to the National Post newspaper, sent a statement to the Kitchener CTV station referring to themselves as the Willow Pond Mink Freedom Movement.
On the website operated by the Animal Liberation Front press office, a 2015 visit to the farm and eight other Ontario mink operations in southern Ontario is described. At one farm, it was said scores of mink were freed.
The site describes mink farm conditions in Ontario as appalling, but according Rankin and the CMBA, the fur-bearing animals are raised under humane conditions.
An updated code of practice was introduced in 2013. Listed are recommendations and requirements for lighting, ventilation, temperature, cage design, animal density, feed and more.
Rankin, whose family has been raising minks since 1937, said the meat-eating animals are housed in steel wire cages equipped with nesting boxes with reduced densities — one or two mink per cage. One of the biggest costs for producers is for the feed. Everything from fish and cooked eggs to poultry and beef is fed.
“It’s of human quality; just not the stuff most people choose to eat.”
According to the CMBA, the value of Canadian fur exports topped $300 million in 2015 with mink produced on more than 300 farms.
